


Day 45

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fireworks, Gen or Pre-Slash, Holding Hands, M/M, Post-Episode: s10e23 Brother's Keeper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the Fourth of July, and the sky is dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 45

**Author's Note:**

> A month too late to be seasonal, but hey.
> 
> Thanks so much to [frozen_delight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_delight) for her beta help and kind words. <3
> 
> ETA: Possibly some S11 spoilers in the comments. Be warned!

The clock radio beside Dean’s bed says 15:42. His internal clock says it’s more like four in the morning, but then it always does these days.

It isn’t just the darkness (lower case), though the permanent blackout curtains drawn across the sky sure as hell don’t help. Dean’s been living in an underground bunker for near enough three years now. He’s gotten used to waking up without birdsong or daylight. There’s more to the Darkness (upper case) than the absence of all that stuff. A heaviness that sinks over him like a blanket when he tries to move or think. It feels like the air is different, like his limbs are weighted with lead and his brain is foggy from dehydration or top-drawer painkillers or one of the dozen other things that make your thoughts molasses-slow and muzzy.

At first Dean put it down to losing the Mark. Thought that maybe he’d gotten used to being amped-up and alert, having an edge and a strength that wasn’t really his, or shouldn’t have been, anyway. Maybe this was just what being human felt like. Maybe, somewhere along the line, he’d forgotten.

That was why he kept quiet about it. He thought about talking to Cas— _was this what it was like when you lost your grace? did you feel this crappy when I tossed you out and left you to go sleep on a gas station floor?_ —but didn’t. 

Part of it was guilt. The other part—well. Somewhere in there, he was afraid that if he kept on wondering, he might find that he actually missed it. The Mark made things bloodier, but it made them simpler. Or it made them look simpler, anyhow. 

Dean could just picture Cas’s worried frown, if he ever admitted that. The careful blank Sam would use to hide his disappointment. The dumb shit they might both pull in the name of fixing it.

Wasn’t how it all shook out, in the end. 

He’d gotten into the habit of watching Sam to see how Sam was watching him. Probably, that was the only reason either of them noticed.

First they found Cas, bloodied up like he’d been in a hell of a fight and refusing to talk about it. They ran like hell back to the bunker, then they cleaned up and hit the books hard. Or Sam did, anyway. Dean put in a few desultory hours, but the words kept swimming before his eyes, blurring with images of Sam kneeling before him and Cas sprawled on the floor like a squashed bug and his own reflection cracked right down the middle. He drank three straight whiskeys, and when they didn’t fix the problem, he headed down to the garage to give his poor, abused baby some TLC and avoid looking at his eyes in the bodywork.

He was expecting Sam to give him some lecture about priorities when he made his way back up the library, but it didn’t happen. Sam didn’t exactly look laser-focused himself. Head in his hands, bent over the same book he’d been looking at when Dean made his escape. Maybe even the same page. When Sam raised his head, his eyes were half-lidded, and it took him a couple seconds to focus on Dean’s face. 

It was weird, because disaster’s always been fuel to Sammy’s fire. Knowing they’re about to get their asses kicked has always made him more stupidly determined to fix things, not less. Dean is the one who wears hopelessness like a second skin, but even he manages to keep on trucking most of the time, and that’s because of Sam.

But right then, Sam looked like he didn’t even have the energy to half-ass his research. Quarter-ass it, maybe.

“Anything?” Dean asked.

Sam was quiet for a moment, then shrugged. “Not yet. Actually, I’m getting pretty tired. Think I’m gonna call it a night.”

Dean found himself yawning in sympathy before he thought to pull out his cellphone and check the time. It was four in the afternoon.

They figured it was just a darkness thing, at first. The literal darkness—the way it screwed with perceptions of day and night. Like jetlag, only it never let up. Everything got slower and heavier with every passing day. It got harder to keep a handle on what was happening, to remember what day it was or whether they’d checked out a particular book already. 

Then, shit started going down on the TV news. Dean had thought—distractedly, not connecting it to anything—that it was weird people weren’t making more of a fuss about the sky going inexplicably dark, but the stories that filtered through put a new spin on it.

There was an item about a factory outside Chicago shutting down production because half the workforce just hadn’t shown up. Another one about public transit services in a whole bunch of cities failing to run. A whole cancer ward in Boston where none of the patients came in for chemo. A farm that burned to the ground in Iowa because nobody bothered to call the fire service. Even the news anchors looked like they were going through the motions. One of them had egg on his tie.

After that, they both took to guzzling 5-hour energy shots, only sleeping a couple hours at a time for fear that longer might be dangerous. A couple more factory closures on TV, and they came to an unspoken agreement to start hoarding canned goods and other necessities, keeping things dark unless absolutely necessary to save on lightbulbs.

Turns out, Dean is okay with that part. Like now. Waking up in the dark—well, he’s done that his entire life. Making it literal doesn’t seem that big of a deal.

He climbs out of bed and finds the washstand by touch, splashes cold water on his face. His reflection is featureless in the dim light.

He turns away from it.

 

\----

 

Dean puts the kitchen light on long enough to make coffee, then kills it and checks out the library. It’s dark. Sam was still holding up when Dean turned in; he must be catching a couple hours. There’s no sign of Cas.

Maybe the Darkness is starting to get to him, too. Could be he’s starting to need sleep like a human, the way he did the first time he got cut off from Heaven for trying to help them. A quick check of the spare bedrooms finds them empty, though, and when Dean wanders into the war room, there’s an unaccustomed breath of cool air blowing through it.

Front door’s open. It takes Dean a couple seconds to notice it. Yeah, he definitely needs to caffeinate as soon as he’s dealt with—whatever this is.

He creeps up the steps, listening, grateful in the silence for the fact that he hasn’t put his boots on yet. Less grateful when he gropes at the back of his waistband and realizes he’s left his gun under his pillow. He braces himself for attack as he inches through the door.

It doesn’t come. There’s just darkness and stillness—and Cas, sitting on the grass a little way off. Dean flicks on the light just inside the bunker, sees that Cas has his back to the door.

“Hello, Dean,” he says, without turning his head, and Dean exhales.

Kinda pathetic, that just hearing it is a comfort. Pretty much everything else has gotten progressively more fucked-up since they first met, but this one simple greeting stays the same. Dean can’t make up for any of the crap he’s pulled, can’t feel like Cas is _his_ the way that he used to, but he still has this. The way Cas says his name.

He puts out the light. “What are you doing out here?” he grumbles, and pads over toward Cas. The grass is dry under his feet. No dew. Dean doesn’t know if that’s a natural effect of the darkness or an unnatural effect of the Darkness, but he’d bet that it can’t be good. “You shouldn’t leave the door open. You don’t know what might get in.”

“Do you know what day it is?” Cas asks him, instead of answering.

“Tuesday?” Dean guesses, sinking down to sit beside him on the grass. He hasn’t actually checked the calendar in days. 

Cas, looking up at the starless sky, doesn’t turn to face him. Dean’s probably an asshole for being glad about that. 

It’s just—Cas hasn’t healed himself. Either he’s saving his juice, or whatever he tangled with before they found him was powerful enough to hurt him in ways he couldn’t fix. Dean can’t look at those scabs and bruises without feeling like he put them there himself.

“July Fourth,” Cas says. “It’s a holiday of some significance in this country, correct?”

Dean raises an eyebrow. Keeps his face bland as best he can against the realization. 

There are no fireworks. It’s July Fourth, and it’s dark in the middle of the afternoon, and nobody’s letting off fireworks. 

“That another thing you got from Metadouche?” he asks, instead of saying it.

“You,” Cas says. 

He keeps his eyes up and offers no further comment. Dean doesn’t remember explaining it to him, but it could’ve come up in any one of a hundred weird-ass conversations in a hundred shitty diners, could’ve been forgotten in the wake of any one of a hundred disasters.

“Your Heaven,” Cas adds, then, and Dean turns to stare at him.

“You—went there?” he says. Doesn’t know if it’s an accusation. “How’s that even work? I was dead for a couple minutes, and you weren’t exactly along for the ride.”

Cas’s coat rustles as he shrugs. “Heaven is built around the souls it holds. It’s like molding plaster. A soul can be gone from Heaven and still leave an imprint.”

“So you decided to go hang around mine.” Dean raises an eyebrow. “C’mon, there have gotta be people up there with more exciting greatest hits.”

“I couldn’t speak to you. It was the next best thing.”

“Why the hell not? I always pick up the phone.” Except that Cas hasn’t exactly been calling him much, these past few months. And before that—well, Dean definitely wasn’t picking up the phone, and he doesn’t like to think about what he might’ve said if he had.

Cas turns to look at him without saying anything, and it dawns on Dean what he’s talking about. The time when he was working with Crowley, hiding from Sam and Dean because he knew they’d try talking some sense into him, and he’d already decided it was his way or the highway.

Should’ve been obvious, probably, but it punches a hole in Dean from the inside, makes him crumple in around it, and the only thing he can come out with is, “Huh.”

He could ask about it—how you come back from that, how you wreck your world and live with it—but he doesn’t think Cas would actually have an answer. Because he hasn’t lived with it, not really. Cas might be an angel, but when was the last time he spent two days together in Heaven? You can never go home again. Sometimes the clichés are true.

“I missed you,” Cas says, then, and Dean still doesn’t know what to say. 

_Well, I’ll bet you regret that now. Just look what you were missing._

Dean hunches in on himself, drawing his knees in close. He isn’t shivering, but he can feel that he’ll start to in a little while. It’s always cold now. He tugs at the dying grass, looks at the brown strands that come away in his hand and not at Cas. Like a kid covering his eyes and saying, _You can’t see me._

If he’s honest—and hey, might as well be; he doesn’t have to look himself in the eye these days—that’s what he’s been doing since Day One, since the Darkness hit. He’s so damn tired. The whole time he had the Mark, he could feel Sammy and Cas watching him, waiting for him to fuck up, to prove he wasn’t the person they knew anymore. Now, it still feels like they’re waiting, only now they’re waiting for him to prove that he _is_. 

He doesn’t know if he is.

A touch between his shoulder blades startles him, makes him drop his blades of grass and look up on instinct. Cas is still looking at him. He’s an expressionless shadow in the darkness, but that doesn’t make Dean feel any less like hiding.

“Dean,” Cas says, and he braces himself for the opening gambit of some stilted conversation about how they can’t lose hope, or how they have a duty to redeem themselves, or how Cas is still dumb enough to think Dean’s one of the good guys. But then Cas just says, “look up.”

He removes his hand, raises it like he’s reaching out to the hidden stars. And then there’s light.

A streak of silver, like a kid’s idea of a shooting star. It soars right up over their heads, bright, bright against the black, and explodes in a fountain of sparks. They leave shimmering trails as they fall, as they curve back toward the earth from that single point. A temporary cathedral of light against the absolute dark.

The last droplets fade. Probably, Dean should ask Cas what the hell he thinks he’s doing, tell him he needs to save his grace for the next time they have a Big Bad to fight, but he doesn’t. He keeps staring at the afterimage until Cas does it again, swirls of light blooming like a bruise in negative. The road down into Lebanon stands out in monochrome for a fraction of a second. The bare branches of the trees reach for the sky like drowning hands. 

First time Dean’s seen the world in forty-five days. It makes something ache in his chest, like he’s bruised on the inside.

He could just stay here, staring at the sky. Let the world be something he sees in flashes; never have to meet its eyes. See the light and the darkness far above him, far out of his reach. Too distant to be his responsibility. 

The longer he looks at the sky, the longer he can go without looking at Cas, or Sam. Without having to see them look at him.

He sighs and turns back to Cas. 

“You can’t keep doing this,” he says. “I mean, not that I don’t appreciate the lightshow, but you’re cut off from Heaven right now. You’re not exactly running on rechargeable batteries.”

“My grace has been no use against the Darkness so far,” Cas points out.

“Yeah, but it was the archangels that kicked its ass first time around, right? They were basically you on steroids.” Dean pauses. “And maybe crack. Anyway, point is, they’re powered the same way as you, they just got more of it.”

Cas inclines his head. It’s a familiar gesture—and unfamiliar at the same time, thoughtful in a different way than when Cas first showed up on Earth. Back then, Dean felt like a bug on the ground, like Cas was studying him from some angelic perch way up on high. Now, Cas is down here right beside him, puzzling out Heaven’s past and unable to touch it. 

“I’m not sure it was their grace that stopped the Darkness,” Cas says, his voice meditative. “Grace—it’s just power. Energy. It can be used for good or evil.” He’s quiet for a second. Dean doesn’t ask what he’s remembering. “To combat the Darkness—they would’ve needed something that was its polar opposite.”

Dean frowns. “Like what, light? They just created a few supernovas outta nothing?”

“Not just light. Pure creation. Love. The will to live. Human things.” Cas’s voice softens, goes kind of misty, as though the phrase calls something to mind that Dean doesn’t know about.

Dean exhales, his head suddenly heavy. “Then the earth is definitely doomed.”

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer, series seven, episode—” Cas breaks off. “You weren’t talking about the television show.”

Despite himself, Dean snorts out a laugh. Then he sobers. “C’mon, Cas,” he says. “You’ve been around humans a while now. We’re pretty damn small and pretty damn crappy. If it’s us versus the primordial chaos? May as well break out the single malt and forget about it. You know. Bang a few gongs before the rest of the lights go out.” He can’t help the bitterness in his voice.

“Dean—”

“You know I’m right, Cas.”

Cas is probably doing his pissy face right now. The one he gets when Dean’s trying to talk him out of something spectacularly dumb, or when he thinks whatever Dean is about to do is spectacularly dumb. 

He doesn’t snipe back at Dean, though. Just sighs, then says, “I met a woman in Indiana.”

Dean peers at him in the darkness. “…Okay?”

“In church. I was human.” Cas pauses. “I was angry. I tried to tell her the truth. That God wasn’t listening, that there weren’t even angels in Heaven anymore.”

“Nice one, Buzz Killington.”

“She told me that my lack of faith didn’t cancel what she believed. I don’t think I understood her, then.”

“And you do now?” Dean turns away, looks back up at the empty sky. “That’s horseshit. She was only saying it because she didn’t know any better. You did. You do.”

“That was what I thought then,” Cas tells him. “But I only knew my truth. Not hers.”

Dean closes his eyes and lays back on the ground. The dry grass scratches the back of his neck. “Drop it, Cas,” he says. “You’ve joined the official fan club of the human race, that’s awesome. But you ain’t gonna make a believer out of me.” He shrugs. “You wanna let off your magic fireworks, knock yourself out. I’ll buy a damn front row ticket. Just quit it with the happy clappy stuff.”

He expects Cas to push it further, make some bitchy comment about Dean not understanding _his_ truth, but all he says is, “You have your eyes closed.”

“Fine.” Dean opens them in time to see a faint shower of bluish sparks dissipating in the sky. Not right overhead, like the first two. Down over the town. He turns back to Cas. “Gotta say, man, not as impressive as your openers.”

He hears Cas’s breath catch in his throat. For a second, Dean thinks he’s about to get another lecture.

Then Cas says, “That wasn’t me,” his voice full of wonder.

That makes Dean sit up. He peers down at the town. The light pollution is so faint these days, he wouldn’t even know Lebanon, Kansas existed if he hadn’t been there. But the next time the sky lights up, he sees it clear as day. 

A spray of red shooting stars. A regular old Fourth of July firework. 

A sign of human life.

As Dean watches, another follows it—white, this time. And another, and another. He looks to his left and finds himself arrested by the look on Cas’s face—expectant, _hopeful_ , like a kid on Christmas morning—and the way the light touches the edges of his profile, silvers his lips and shines in his eyes. Things Dean’s been forbidding himself to notice for so long he can almost believe he never did.

He swallows. Looks back at the fireworks. 

“You think that’s because of us?” he asks. Pauses. “Because of you, I mean? You started the Mexican Wave, or whatever?”

Cas turns that wondering look on him, then. “I think it’s cause for hope,” he says, and it should sound like _I told you so_ , but instead it sounds like _please_.

Dean ducks his head. “Look,” he says, and points. “There’s another one. Across town.”

Cas follows his gaze. Smiles as the sky erupts in light. 

They sit there watching a long time. Dean finds himself wondering whose fireworks these are. The dude who owns the grocery store? The woman who works in the bank? The kids who hang around the town square on their skateboards, sneaking out to play with matches like he and Sammy did that night? 

For the first time since the Darkness fell, he feels a traitorous answering spark threaten to kindle inside of him. A reason to fight.

The fireworks peter out, eventually. Dean looks over at Cas, obscured again by the dark.

“You think that’s it?” he says, and doesn’t know if he’s still talking about the fireworks.

He startles when Cas’s hand finds his in the darkness. Just a brush of fingertips over the healing scabs on his knuckles. Dean hesitates for the space of a heartbeat, then for another, and turns his hand palm-up; lets Cas interlace their fingers. Holds his breath.

“No,” Cas says, with a fierceness so warm it sounds human. “No. It isn’t over.”

 

\----

 

The first knock at their door comes later that night. 

Sam gets there first. He opens it ready to shoot, but stops at the sight of the pale woman on the doorstep. 

She’s dressed in standard hunter gear—heavy-duty denim, sturdy boots, oversized leather jacket—and she’s carrying a handgun, though from the half-dead droop of her shoulders, she likely doesn’t have the reaction speed right now to hit a tortoise. 

“Can I help you?” Sam says.

“Sam Winchester? I’m Kara,” the woman offers. “Kara Fisher. We spoke on the phone a couple months back? I was dealing with a pair of vetalas in Ohio and you told me how to kill them.” She gives a tired smile. “You can break out the silver and holy water if you gotta, but if you’ve looked out a window lately, you’ve already got this place warded to the gills.”

Sam’s face clears and he steps back to let her in, giving Dean a nod. Dean hangs back, though it’s mostly out of habit. You don’t get too trusting too quick in front of other hunters. Makes you look like an amateur. 

Sam seems to trust her. Plus, being able to walk in the front door basically guarantees that somebody’s either Cas or human, and she definitely isn’t Cas.

“How’d you find us?” Sam asks.

“Honestly?” Kara starts down the stairs, heaving her heavy pack off of her back. “I almost didn’t. I was on my way to a hunt in Colorado when the sky went out, and since then—” She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s been weird.”

Sam nods. “Like you’re sleepwalking?” he says. “Going through the motions, but you don’t really know what you’re doing?”

She nods. “Exactly. Got hard to even keep awake after a while. I was a couple miles outta town, pulled over at the side of the road. Told myself I was just gonna take five. Rest my eyes.” She shudders. “I don’t know if I ever would’ve opened them again. Only then I saw the fireworks.”

“Fireworks?” Sam raises an eyebrow and looks at Dean. Dean nods, makes a gesture that he hopes gets across, _I’ll explain later_.

“Yeah. Didn’t have a clue where I was, so I just drove toward them. And when I saw the sign for Lebanon, I thought it sounded familiar. Then I remembered you were based here, and I thought, hey. Maybe they know what’s going on. And if not, well, we still have a better chance against it with numbers on our side.” Kara shrugs. “So here I am.”

“You alone?” Sam asks.

She nods. “But you know, that was a pretty spectacular lightshow out there. And people still have phones and YouTube.” Kara smiles. “I have a feeling I won’t be the last.”

There’s a movement in the back of the room: Cas letting himself in. Dean catches his eye, sees him look at Kara, then back at Dean. He tilts his head in question.

“Fireworks,” Dean says.

Cas smiles at him, and it’s like watching the sky light up.


End file.
